Broken Palms
by rabbitwire
Summary: Magnus Bane is the boy who lurks in corners and sulks in shadows; he is not welcome in the realm of light, but nor does he want to flee into the terrors of the dark. A oneshot drabble examining the temptation of magic, set in Magnus's imagined childhood.


**A/N**: Just a drabble. I don't own, blah blah blah, etc. Please do review, even if it just a tiny little sentence!

--rabbitwire

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Magnus Bane is the boy who lurks in corners and sulks in shadows. While others run through the fields, he keeps below the eaves in alleyways, his cat-pupils glimmering in the dark, his back hunched and bent like a broken willow switch. Magnus is a boy for whom magic crackles, blue and sparkling between his palms; he is the boy for whom light comes only from his hands, his spells, because sunlight is a dangerous thing.

Magnus has no quarrels with the sun itself. His quarrels are only with those who seek its shelter, the adults and the bullies and the children, and their sneers, their disdain, their fear. They steal the sunlight from him, swindling his haven and making the bright world a place of terror, a place where boys grind your bones under their heels or burn your palms with pokers for looking at them the wrong way, a place where you can expect to be taunted or beaten or drowned.

It is wrong to strike back—but that doesn't stop him from training, studying, learning how to defend himself _just in case_ it comes down to that. He loves his sparks, his magic, loves the dance of light through the air, loves the way he can whisper to the world and have it answer back, and hates it, too—hates the innate wrongness of it, hates the way it leaves his skin itching with guilty pleasure. When he is found out, accused of dark arts, he just tucks his chin to his chest and takes the punishments that are doled, and when he sees the boys the next day he always, always knows what will be coming.

He hides in it, but he knows that it isn't right—the dark. The dark does not to fit to him; it always feels as if the shadows are breathing steam against his sweat-flushed pores, as if the dark is ravenous, predatory. He finds definitions fascinating: _dark_ can only exist in the shadow of the light, and it is from this vantage point that he crouches, silent, and watches the world from the outside as the dark whispers down his neck, cruel and taunting. That's how he considers the dark—it's outside, other, foreign, and even as others force it upon him, he can't claim it as his own; he keeps fighting for admission to the brighter world, keeps fighting for simple _permission_ to stay away from the melodies that sing in his blood. He tries to listen, to obey. He confesses: _yes, Father, I have sinned. _He has sinned by his birth, by his breath; his only salvation comes in avoiding that which he wants most, but even that is not enough, not for them, and the magic is always, always there, calling to him, pleading with him, and he loves it when his own will breaks, and when the Chthonian rings clear and powerful through his voice, even as he tastes the sin of it staining his tongue, bleak and ashen and sour, he feels it, that shame-tinged pride.

He curses his slit pupils and stares for hours into his rippling reflection in the river by the barn, wondering how much it would hurt to claw out his eyes. He considers it—presses a thumb and forefinger to the rim of his eyelid, grazes the edge of something wet—and pulls away, blinking away the pain of contact while water slips from his tear ducts. He rails against the unfairness that has made him different, _special_, the world that has crippled him forever, and wishes that suicide was not a sin. He has no courage for blinding, but a jump? A tonic? Yes, he could do that, he tells himself. Life is easily discarded. In a fit of anger he disobeys and uses his magic—he brings the mud to the surface in great ugly swirls, willfully obscuring his reflection before running back to the barn.

He caves to the temptation—he can't keep the magic down, it's always there, always, and it sings through his veins and burns like fire as he calls back. He relishes in it, dancing from foot to foot as the words spring to his tongue and fire flares up in the field, in his pit of stones, and then his father, with his granite face—his father appears on the edge of the field, a torch in his hand and fury trembling on his parted lips.

The next day finds Magnus with his face pressed into a riverbed, salt mingling with the freshwater while he thrashes, begs, pleads, kicks, writhes, and the water is everywhere it is everywhere and there are fingers wrapped around his neck, a hand shoving down his head, and a knee on his back and he is _drowning_—

--the magic saves him, though he doesn't mean it to. He wakes up later that night, a fierce pounding splitting his head that makes everything appear in twos. The darkness is no longer internal—overhead, the stars shine, cold, unfeeling pinpricks of light amidst the world of night. He drags himself out of the riverbed, retches, and settles, exhausted, into the dirt, wondering why he is alive at all, but not caring, not really. The next morning, he steals a loaf of bread and leaves, river water still weighing down his clothes.


End file.
